1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to brassieres with shock-absorbing energy absorption, useful for athletic and industrial use. More particularly, the present invention relates to such brassieres which are easy to wash and dry.
2. Review of the Related Technology
In body contact sports, such as martial arts, basketball, football, hockey, and soccer, there is a need to protect women's breasts from injuries which result from impact. The risk to the breast is both short-term and long-term. Injuries can lead to later infections, cysts, and benign tumors. In addition, women can concentrate and perform better when their breasts are protected from potential injury and discomfort, reducing their worry.
A protective brassiere used for sports gets sweaty and should be easy to wash and dry, but conventional hard protective brassieres are not.
Some protective brassieres use cellular plastic to absorb impact. Cellular plastics are of two types, closed-cell and open-cell. Open-cell foams are sponge-like materials, e.g., polyurethane. These absorb a great deal of water or sweat and provide comfort as a sweat absorber in brassieres. However, since they are so absorbent, they also dry slowly; in order to dry efficiently, such a spongy material should be wrung out and exposed to air on both sides.
This means that open-cell foam is not suitable to be combined with a solid plastic layer in a protective brassiere unless the foam is removable so that it can be squeezed or spun and then dried. Closed-cell foams (for example, neoprene) are easy to dry because they are not water-absorbent. Neoprene is the generic name for polymerized chloroprene. Only the surface can be wetted, and the surface is easily dried. However, if a closed-cell foam is combined with a solid plastic sheet, when the brassiere is washed, water will seep between the two impervious layers and stay there, which might lead to bacteria growth and foul odors.
Several previous workers have developed impact-resisting brassieres.
Weinberg, U.S. Pat. No. 4,566,458 discloses (FIG. 8) a removable hard brassiere cup 12 and an inner liner 16, which is fibrous (column 2, line 66). A polyester foam cushion 50 is attached to the rim for comfort and softness, not for protection (column 3, line 28).
McCusker, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,607,640, shows a brassiere with rigid cups which are removable.
In Weinberg and McCusker, the breast protectors are designed for fitting into individual pockets located in a brassiere. Each uses a rigid cup and attempts to distribute an impact force around the perimeter of the cup by designing the cup to follow the contour of the curve of the thorax of the wearer. The object of these designs is to transmit an impact force around the breast, into the rib cage and sternum of the wearer.
In these prior art designs, where the protector contacts the thorax all the way around the breast at all times, the force of a blow is transmitted directly to the thorax. There is no provision for absorbing a portion of the impact by any means other than direct transmission of the impact to the chest along the shell of the rigid cup protector. The cups must be very rigid to resist any inward deformation and are heavy.
In prior art designs, such as Weinberg and McCusker, two separate pockets are formed to hold the hard cups. These separate pockets are separated by a stitching along the center of the brassiere on the front.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,897,821 to Lerner discloses a brassiere sandwich of fabric/closed-cell foam/fabric at column 2, lines 13-15, and specifies the closed-cell foam as ENSOLITE, at column 2, line 19. ENSOLITE is a trade mark for expanded polyvinyl chloride.
Barnes, U.S. Pat. No. 3,176,086, shows brassiere cups 54 and 56 of polyethylene, covered with a resilient shock absorbing cover 72 of cellular plastic (column 2, line 60). Bent portions 76, folded over the cup rim, are fastened along the inside edge with snaps 78. The snaps meet Barnes' object of a brassiere that is readily disassembled for easy cleaning (column 1, line 22). Apparently, the snaps are placed on the inside for appearances' sake, and the bent portion is provided only for snap attachment.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,244,432 to Moy Au et al describes rigid cups 15 with shock-absorbing rims 18 made of rubber or other shock-absorbing material, which are removable and quick-drying (column 3, lines 24-37).
Leo et al, in U.S. Pat. No. 2,516,129, shows a breast protector with a rigid plastic cup (column 3, line 74) and a front cushion of trapped air or cellular rubber material (column 4, line 4) or sponge rubber (column 4, line 57).
Lawson, U.S. Pat. No. 5,022,887, shows a rigid-cup brassiere which provides an air space between the breast and the inside of the cup. This space, or distance d.sub.3, is shown in FIG. 5. The gap is created by making the inner fabric liner 28 smaller than the cup, so that the liner closely supports the breast (column 4, lines 58-63). Distance d.sub.3 provides a ffer zone in case of impact; the inside of the rigid cup can move across the gap as the cup deforms under impact, absorbing energy, before the breast is contacted (column 5, lines 21-39). The two rigid cups overlap in the sternum area, and this also absorbs impact force by allowing either cup to deform under impact and slide over the other (column 6, lines 1-17).